Preaching to the De-Churched: An Interview with Mark Batterson

By the way, this might be really kind of a helpful tip: we do an annual survey every year before that retreat; and one of things I do in that survey is to pitch a dozen sermon series ideas to our congregation and say, "Which one of these series would be most helpful to your spiritual growth?" And we track those numbers—the ones that come back with a very high percentage, it's a pretty good bet we're going to do those series. And then, interestingly enough, the ones that come back very low—in other words, the series that people don't want to hear—those series will often end up making the cut, too, because we're wondering, "Why don't you want to hear about this?"

So we'll put together that strategy. That sounds better than it really is because about 70 percent of those series will make the final cut. Then what will happen is we get into a year, we just feel like God's moving a little different direction, and we'll pull

the plug on one series and plug in another series. It's not a perfect science, but what really helps me is that then I can read strategically months in advance as we're gearing up for different series because we'll know what we're doing. It also enables our creative team to put together elements in advance. So we try to plan out that entire year in advance.

Preaching: As you come into that November staff meeting, have you already sketched out some of your ideas about some of those series? How much of the final decision on the series is yours as opposed to a consensus of the group?

Batterson: We have a teaching team, and I speak about 36 weekends at this point. I used to do 48, but we have two other people on that teaching team. And this year we did something a little bit different. I said to them, "Instead of all the series being my decision, why don't you guys pitch a couple of sermon series ideas; and then you can plug me into the series where you want to do it." I'm definitely a key determining factor, even in delegating a little bit of that responsibility; but it is a little bit more of a team effort than just me making that decision.

Preaching: How many weeks would a normal series be for you?

Batterson: We try to do anywhere between three to five weeks. We think if it's a two-week series, we will not pull out all the stops and do banners, posters, invite cards. It's a little bit pared down because you don't get as much bang for the buck. But if it's a three- to four-week series, then we tend to pull out all the creative stops. We really brand the entire series to the hilt and try to have all of those different elements in place. We've found that if we try to go more than six weeks, we start losing a little bit of the attention span or that series starts losing a little bit of its momentum.

Preaching: Are there certain series you've done in recent years that you've felt really resonated with the congregation?

Batterson: Yeah, you know the very first series that comes to mind is a series we did called the "Elephant in the Church." It's a play on that little phrase the "elephant in the room," an obvious truth that everybody ignores. In keeping with what we're seeing with 20-somethings saying, "Hey, get up in my face. Challenge me. Speak into my life," and in part I think because we're in the bastion of political correctness here in D.C., we just wanted to talk about some of the elephants that are in the church—some subjects that are very difficult for us to talk about, but we need to talk about them. And that series was such a huge success the first time around that it has become an annual series.